[ardour-users] New User / Problems.....

[Doug McLain]

Jason Jones wrote:
> I'm a newbie to ardour, but have been using Linux for about 1.5 years.
> I've got a new ardour system (using the latest version) and it works 
> perfectly.  I'm using it right now with the following system:
> 
> AMD 2500+ Barton
> 512 M 333MHZ DDR RAM
> 80gig Western Digital 7200RPM HD
> ASUS A7N8X Deluxe Motherboard
> NVIDIA Geforce 4MX 8X video.
> NVIDIA Geforce 4MX PCI video (dual monitors using xinerama)
> M-Audio Delta 1010LT audio
> 
> Gentoo Linux - 2.6.8.1-mm kernel
> Gnome-light.
> Nothing is installed but the base system and enough packages to get 
> ardour, muse and qjackctl to run.
> 
> I'm recording a band I'm with and using this computer to do the recording.
> I'm getting about 2 xruns per every 5 minute recording.  I'm at 1024 
> Periods, 2 Frames at 96000K.  Getting around 23ms latency.
> 
> Of course, on a professional recording, *any* xruns is unacceptable.
> 
> I'm just wondering what I need to do to tune my system for better 
> performance...?
> 
> Also...  Just out of curiosity, I've recorded 20 tracks of audio, and am 
> now getting "disk stream underrun" errors while playing back.  I'm 
> assuming this could be because I don't have enough RAM?  Or is it a disk 
> error of some sort?  Is getting it to play 20 tracks (about 4 minutes 
> long) a good reason to have these errors?
> 
> I've never used ardour before, so...  I'm kind of just fishing around to 
> see if these results are normal..
> Thanks for any info provided...  If you need more info on my system, 
> please ask.  I've really got to learn this stuff fast, and get rid of 
> these xruns while keeping latency manageable.
> 
> --Jason
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> 

I run the same soundcard, similar hardware.  Disk performance is your 
weakest link here.  A seperate data drive on a seperate IDE channel 
could help a bit, a hi end SCSI data drive could help lots more :)

Lets hear more information like recording specifics:  How many inital 
tracks are you recording simultaneously? All analog? What instruments?

Since you are currently at -p1024 its probably safe to assume you don't 
have any low latency requirements during initial recording, so bump it 
up to -p2048, or *gasp* even higher.  Try it...

How dead set on using -r96000 are you?  I use -r48000 and I am getting 
stellar results.  That will cut your disk throughput in half.  This 
alone would probably cure the xruns, and save lots of disk space, and 
probably cure your playback problems, and give you more resources 
available when you start getting plugin happy :)

P.S.  Naturally another half meg of ram couldn't hurt